Japanese Language Input Support 日本語

[DreamyAbaddon.3265]

皆さん、こんにちは！

Hey everyone, I am studying Japanese while playing GW2 and I know some people who are also Japanese who play this game too. I would love to practice chatting with them in game using Japanese text. I was hoping to see if we can get support for this because so far GW2 only supports English and Chinese text. It would be awesome to get other language input support for those who are learning other languages and want to play with friends at the same time in game.

ArenaNet, please support Japanese IME text 🥰

ありがとうございます！🙏

[Arianth Moonlight.6453]

no.

[DreamyAbaddon.3265]

Well you can already type in Chinese... So why not just add Japanese IME?

[DreamyAbaddon.3265]

Those who don't want to communicate in Japanese dont have too. But those who want to it would be great. FF14 lets you type between languages. Would be nice if GW2 can.

[Fueki.4753]

14 hours ago, DreamyAbaddon.3265 said:

Well you can already type in Chinese... So why not just add Japanese IME?

China is one of the three main regions for GW2, so of course they needs to support that. Japan, on the other hand, is not.

Also, if they added the language, they'd probably also people to support the language and possibly even monitor is usage to detect inappropriate use. I doubt they are keen on spending money on hiring people to do that.

Adding a language to a game is more than just enabling it to be used in chat.

14 hours ago, DreamyAbaddon.3265 said:

FF14 lets you type between languages.

And in FF14, Japan is one of the main regions (arguably even THE main region). Also, Square Enix is Japanese, so of course they are going to support their mother tongue.

Square Enix may also be more willing to pay people for supporting and monitoring a bigger number of Languages.

 

Edited December 21, 2023 by Fueki.4753

[firedragon.8953]

7 hours ago, Fueki.4753 said:

Also, if they added the language, they'd probably also people to support the language and possibly even monitor is usage to detect inappropriate use. I doubt they are keen on spending money on hiring people to do that.

While this seems to make sense, it actually doesn't. People who speak Japanese in game just chat using romaji (English letters). Assuming none of the people who monitor (?) chat logs know Japanese, it makes little to no difference if it is using Japanese script or not. You can still call someone baka without calling them バカ if you know what I mean.

As someone who runs/ran a bilingual Japanese-English guild, most of us just chatted using romaji in game. It's not great though because, yeah, Japanese has lots of homophones and without using kanji sometimes it's not so easy to understand, and reading romaji can just feel cumbersome. But, for the most part it's fine. For more important group activities (raids, etc.) we used used discord voice chat.

So although I wouldn't be against Japanese IME support in game since I use the language often enough with guild members, etc., I'm pretty ambivalent to it, mainly because of current 3rd party options that allow communication.

[Linken.6345]

3 hours ago, firedragon.8953 said:

While this seems to make sense, it actually doesn't. People who speak Japanese in game just chat using romaji (English letters). Assuming none of the people who monitor (?) chat logs know Japanese, it makes little to no difference if it is using Japanese script or not. You can still call someone baka without calling them バカ if you know what I mean.

As someone who runs/ran a bilingual Japanese-English guild, most of us just chatted using romaji in game. It's not great though because, yeah, Japanese has lots of homophones and without using kanji sometimes it's not so easy to understand, and reading romaji can just feel cumbersome. But, for the most part it's fine. For more important group activities (raids, etc.) we used used discord voice chat.

So although I wouldn't be against Japanese IME support in game since I use the language often enough with guild members, etc., I'm pretty ambivalent to it, mainly because of current 3rd party options that allow communication.

Yea and alot of people know what baka means or can use google to report it if they feel nessesary.

alot of people would not know the japanese spelling of it.

[Fueki.4753]

5 hours ago, firedragon.8953 said:

While this seems to make sense, it actually doesn't. People who speak Japanese in game just chat using romaji (English letters). Assuming none of the people who monitor (?) chat logs know Japanese, it makes little to no difference if it is using Japanese script or not. You can still call someone baka without calling them バカ if you know what I mean.

As someone who runs/ran a bilingual Japanese-English guild, most of us just chatted using romaji in game. It's not great though because, yeah, Japanese has lots of homophones and without using kanji sometimes it's not so easy to understand, and reading romaji can just feel cumbersome. But, for the most part it's fine.

This is just a by-product of enabling the Roman alphabet, which is in the game because they support languages that use it. You can call it an accidental result, if you want.

One could also write Plattdüütsch ("low German") or Dutch in the game, despite them not being supported languages (as far as I am aware). And yes, Plattdüütsch is considered a different language to German.

However, adding the unique character set of a language to the game implies the intent to support said language. This is fundamentally different from "we can just use this other language's character set instead".

Edited December 22, 2023 by Fueki.4753

[firedragon.8953]

3 hours ago, Linken.6345 said:

Yea and alot of people know what baka means or can use google to report it if they feel nessesary.

Yes, in my example I used a word that most people would know. If I didn't, most people wouldn't have understood the example; for example if I used "sukatan" （スカタン）or something. If anything, it being written in Japanese script would give a clue to what language it was in. Hence, the argument that the reason for not using Japanese script is because chat cannot be moderated is a weak one.

I could easily write something random in some language like,  "Cave purpurea animalia quae furantur animam tuam," and moderation would still be an issue. It would be just as hard if I wrote 「魂を奪う紫の動物に気をつけろ」in Japanese. The funny thing about language is, it is nearly powerless if it isn't understood. If anything, it can only cause confusion or paranoia. I guess it's weak magic.

1 hour ago, Fueki.4753 said:

This is just a by-product of enabling the Roman alphabet...

I agree. That is why your argument being one of the difficulties of moderation is weak.
 

1 hour ago, Fueki.4753 said:

However, adding the unique character set of a language to the game implies the intent to support said language. This is fundamentally different from "we can just use this other language's character set instead".

I suppose I can agree with this statement regarding implied intent. Although, an easy work around is a statement from Arenanet saying the only officially support (insert current supported language list.) However, do realize this contradicts your previous statement regarding the ability to type Dutch, an unsupported language, in game merely because it shares an alphabet; it poses the same difficulties for moderation (your original argument). Ultimately, this argument is a philosophical/ideological stance, and not a barrier of technology or knowledge so arriving at an objective conclusion would prove difficult.

[Fueki.4753]

1 hour ago, firedragon.8953 said:

I agree. That is why your argument being one of the difficulties of moderation is weak.

1 hour ago, firedragon.8953 said:

I suppose I can agree with this statement regarding implied intent. Although, an easy work around is a statement from Arenanet saying the only officially support (insert current supported language list.) However, do realize this contradicts your previous statement regarding the ability to type Dutch, an unsupported language, in game merely because it shares an alphabet; it poses the same difficulties for moderation (your original argument). Ultimately, this argument is a philosophical/ideological stance, and not a barrier of technology or knowledge so arriving at an objective conclusion would prove difficult.

How is this in any weak or contradicting?

They did not add the languages on purpose, so there's no expectation for them to be moderated. They didn't purposely made Dutch or Plattdüütsch available in the game, so noone expects them to support these languages. It's an incidental bonus for some players, but that's it.

But adding an entire character set is a fundamentally different matter. Adding a character set is a decision made on purpose, thus there is an expectation for that language to be moderated.

Edited December 22, 2023 by Fueki.4753

[kharmin.7683]

I knew I had seen this somewhere:

 

[Linken.6345]

38 minutes ago, kharmin.7683 said:

I knew I had seen this somewhere:

 

Good old Gaile Gray.

[RoyalPredator.9163]

I just support this idea...
I'm learning bit of Japanese, and I already have trouble speaking with Ukrain/Russian friends (Cyrillic)
So... Please!  お願いします！Пожалуйста!

[kharmin.7683]

20 minutes ago, RoyalPredator.9163 said:

I just support this idea...
I'm learning bit of Japanese, and I already have trouble speaking with Ukrain/Russian friends (Cyrillic)
So... Please!  お願いします！Пожалуйста!

Did you not read the last post in this thread before posting?  The one that is now above yours?

[Dzjudz.9142]

That wasn't an answer in relation to the question though. Gaile said that game localization would not be done in a new language. Both the OP of that thread and of this thread are not asking about localization of the game in another language (translating all texts into another language). What they are asking for is the ability to use Greek (the OP of the linked thread) or Japanese characters in the text box while typing. That's all.

[Astralporing.1957]

On 12/21/2023 at 7:42 AM, DreamyAbaddon.3265 said:

FF14 lets you type between languages. Would be nice if GW2 can.

FF XIV doesn't support all languages either - and there are some unique national language characters that can be used in GW2, but not in FF XIV.

[Therac.6431]

ArenaNet is irredutible about new languages in their product, years ago a massive amount of Russians and Brazilians tried at least the text translated and Anet refused any idea about this type of request. Like someone said on the topic if they implement a language they should offer support, Portuguese and Russian for example maybe is so much for them, Spanish is almost an universal language like English maybe is the only reason to find this language on the game

[Astralporing.1957]

6 hours ago, Therac.6431 said:

ArenaNet is irredutible about new languages in their product, years ago a massive amount of Russians and Brazilians tried at least the text translated and Anet refused any idea about this type of request. Like someone said on the topic if they implement a language they should offer support, Portuguese and Russian for example maybe is so much for them, Spanish is almost an universal language like English maybe is the only reason to find this language on the game

You mean 5 or 6 people?

[Frozey.8513]

On 12/21/2023 at 10:17 PM, Fueki.4753 said:

China is one of the three main regions for GW2, so of course they needs to support that. Japan, on the other hand, is not.

Also, if they added the language, they'd probably also people to support the language and possibly even monitor is usage to detect inappropriate use. I doubt they are keen on spending money on hiring people to do that.

Adding a language to a game is more than just enabling it to be used in chat.

There are 24 official languages within Europe alone, thus I have hard time believing Anet would have people monitoring each and every language being used to the degree you paint it out to be. OP is only asking for Japanese language characters being able to be typed into the chat, no localization, no new servers for main region, just the individual symbols being able to be typed out in the chat.

[Astralporing.1957]

1 hour ago, Frozey.8513 said:

There are 24 official languages within Europe alone, thus I have hard time believing Anet would have people monitoring each and every language being used to the degree you paint it out to be. OP is only asking for Japanese language characters being able to be typed into the chat, no localization, no new servers for main region, just the individual symbols being able to be typed out in the chat.

They aren't supporting 24 official eu languages. They are supporting 4. The others are just covered as a byproduct of that (basically, if you cover english, spanish, german and french, you are either already using fonts/codepages with support for all other EU language specific diacritics, or are using some extremely old font/codepage implementations). Japanese (or cyrilic) are not covered in that way however - they'd require Anet to put additional effort to implement.

[Fueki.4753]

1 hour ago, Frozey.8513 said:

There are 24 official languages within Europe alone, thus I have hard time believing Anet would have people monitoring each and every language being used to the degree you paint it out to be.

And most of them being able to be typed in the game's chat is merely a by-product of them using the same character set as the four European supported languages that are English, German, French and Spanish. You can call it a happy accident for the people who want to use these languages.

Japanese on the other hand does not share its character sets with any of the supported languages.

Adding the specific character set of a language in an official manner is done on purpose, not a happy accident. And doing it on purpose implies the intend to support the language.

[Frozey.8513]

1 minute ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

They aren't supporting 24 official eu languages. They are supporting 4. The others are just covered as a byproduct of that (basically, if you cover english, spanish, german and french, you are either already using fonts/codepages with support for all other EU language specific diacritics, or are using some extremely old font/codepage implementations). Japanese (or cyrilic) are not covered in that way however - they'd require Anet to put additional effort to implement.

Of course it will require additional effort from Anet to implement, however under normal circumstances the amount of effort required to implement this shouldn't be too much. Then again mayhaps the foundations of GW2 spaghetti code are truly so flimsy that simply adding additional recognized characters would break the camel's back, which would explain why a lot of other similar QoL updates haven't ever been added.

[Frozey.8513]

4 minutes ago, Fueki.4753 said:

And most of them being able to be typed in the game's chat is merely a by-product of them using the same character set as the four European supported languages that are English, German, French and Spanish. You can call it a happy accident for the people who want to use these languages.

Japanese on the other hand does not share its character sets with any of the supported languages.

Adding the specific character set of a language in an official manner is done on purpose, not a happy accident. And doing it on purpose implies the intend to support the language.

Many of the European languages can't be written with simply same characters as English, German, French and Spanish, yet letters from beyond them are still recognized in GW2. Just look at the Nordic languages for instance, it's not just a happy accident like you paint it to be.

[Astralporing.1957]

1 hour ago, Frozey.8513 said:

Many of the European languages can't be written with simply same characters as English, German, French and Spanish, yet letters from beyond them are still recognized in GW2. Just look at the Nordic languages for instance, it's not just a happy accident like you paint it to be.

Not the same characters (you don't enable support for individual characters). The same fonts and utf-8 tables. Basically, if you enable everything that's needed for those 4 languages, you can be practically certain that all the tables needed for all latin-based EU languages will work. Notice, how japanese is not part of those.

[Fueki.4753]

9 hours ago, Frozey.8513 said:

Just look at the Nordic languages for instance, it's not just a happy accident like you paint it to be.

Norwegian, Swedish, Danish and Icelandic all are Germanic languages, so it makes sense that their special characters are all part of the same character set that is used for German's special characters.

French and Spanish are Latin-based, so it makes sense that special characters for other Latin-based characters share the same character set as well.

But Japanese is neither of them, nor does Japanese share the same character set as Chinese.

And thus, with Japanese not sharing a character set with a supported language, there's no reason why Japanese should be usable in the game.

Edited April 27 by Fueki.4753